Jahshaka V2 Startup Screen Finalists

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jah.pngNot Blender news, but think of Jahshaka as Blender’s cousin. As an open source project Jahshaka was part of the Open Source Pavillion at Siggraph with us. Jahshaka is a realtime editing and effects system supporting Linux, OsX, Irix and Windows, and is certainly an up-and-comer in the open source graphics/film community. They certainly got plenty of attention at Siggraph, so I expect nothing but good things coming from the team.

They are having a contest for the start up screen that will be in the final 2.0 version (they are in RC3 and RC4 is fast approaching), and it’s down to 12 finalists. They are all video startup screens and each is really nicely done and I am sure some (if not all) had Blender’s help.

From the site:

The V2 Startup Screen contest was awesome and we have selected the finalists! Now its up to you to help choose the winner! We narrowed it down to the Top 12 so take a look at the awesome entries in the winners circle and vote for your favourite entry!

If you haven’t tried Jahshaka out, now is a great time to take a look as well as vote for a finalist if you are so inclined.

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    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      Jahshaka is growing very fast and is a very promising piece of software. I’d love to see Blender and Jahshaka working together in the future (It would be fantastic if Jahshaka support .blend files natively and both applications could have good interoperativity).

      I think that both programs will be the main part of the VFX workflow in Open Source platforms very soon.

      BTW, I made my splash screen for the contest using Blender, Gimp and Jahshaka. Check it out, it’s in the finalists round! ;-)

    • Joost Bouwer

      @Gez I haven’t looked at jahshaka for a long time but if there is one thing that jah is not, then it’s fast growing. V2 is promised for more then 3 years now… And I’m a little dissapointed. As you might notice.
      I still fail to see why there should be 3D file support in a video editor/compositor. But I loved the much of the splash screens.

      Joost

    • Omar

      Yeah, they’ve finished the cosmetic/fancy work, now they could finally work on functionalities (maybe next 3years) :p
      A sure thing, they have weirds priorities but a good sense of marketing.
      – eg:Jah is a coffee maker with 3d accel/compositing sponsored by Nvidiaâ„¢–

      This isn’t in making to win prize you’ll do a great soft, really useful a 3seconds splash

      yes, also a disappointed one here.

      cheers

    • Tony

      If Jahshaka is Blender’s cousin it’s Blender’s slow, unemployed, underacheiving cousin. Hearing about Jashaka’s splash screen is like hearing about that cousin’s new T-shirt.

      I’ve been *wanting* to love Jahshaka for years now. I’d love to think that Jahshaka’s going to start meeting minimal expectations to become a usable piece of software, but they’ve been looking slick for ages now without the functionality to back it up, so the splash screen news doesn’t exactly fill me with hope.

      I’ll definitely download 2.0 (not the RC builds, I’m afraid. Been there, done that.) But it’s up to the software, not the splash screen, to determine whether I immediately trash it again or not.

    • oto

      Yes, “coffe-maker” ( with lots of vapor) it’s a good definition of Jahshaka :)
      “Style” these days, worths much I’m afraid
      And it only can be the “bastard” cousin of Blender
      When Blender “cames out” ( around 1.68 version) silently, with it’s fancy/fantastic
      interface/colours palette “weighting” 1,2 Mb??, it was already a great piece of software
      In a day I’ve droped 3D Max (and windows) without regrets

    • spamagnet

      Y’know, I’m almost glad to hear these comments about Jahshaka. I’ve been following it — and trying it out for a while now, and I could never make heads or tails of it. I’ve tried a few tutorials and never got anywhere … and then it crashed. I was left wondering if I was a moron :-)

      Having said that, I really hope it turns into a useful tool, ’cause it sure has potential.

    • http://www.geneome.net Eugene (etr9j)

      I think Jahshaka will grow faster once the userbase grows and more developers join up.

      Even though Jahshaka is still in beta, I think it also needs more documentation and how-to’s though maybe because they are changing things it’s not worth doing.

      But still, from what they showed at Siggraph (I think they were showing a version between RC3 and RC4), Jahashaka *can* do a great deal.

    • Joost Bouwer

      Trust me when I say that were able to show some gorgeous stuff years ago. I don’t how they did it. I don’t even know if the demos were made with jah but I do know that I never ever could create even a simple animation with it. I have been watching it for years and was hoping that it would become a compositor (which it should be according to their website these days). But suddenly it became a NLE and then there was I fight in the development team and the big loser was their lead programmer codenamed Jahshaka (he’s the founder.) Jahshaka (the coder) left a very sad message on the jahshaka forum in which he stated the project wasn’t opensource anymore and that the evil sponsors had stolen his code.
      So the evil sponsors decided to continue with the software but they would leave the initial roadmap and skipped the V2 release because ehhh…. ehhh… I think because they knew that V2 ‘s code was that buggy it would never even run.
      So they went on with developping the V3 code (it happens last spring) and promised that it would be up and running this summer. V3 would mean a complete make over of all the source… Smart decision I thought.
      But then there was poor fellow Jahshaka who continued to complain about the evil sponsors who would make the software closed source bla,blabla. But this morron had some followers and they complained too. So much that the evil sponsors asked morron Jahshaka if he would PLEASE???? come back to the team. They would do anything to get him bakc into the team. My main man Jahshaka wanted his child V2 to be completed and so there was all of the sudden a V2 RC1. Which in fact was unusable. Then there was a V2 RC2 which worked a lot better (I guess because I never used it.) RC2 was the official beta and RC3 would be the golden master. So then there was RC3 but not a golden master but it should be possible to do some video editing with it….
      Anyway after RC2 I finally let go off my hope and spent lots o’ money on software that does do what it promiss. Adobe After Effects 6.5!
      But that doesn’t mean that I’ll never use jah. Whenever it’s ready I will use it. Just as I do now with XSI and blender side by side.

      Joost

    • T-Ry

      Jahshaka is fine until you’re done reading the help docs and trying to find any buttons, because once you try to import something it’s a quick downward spiral. I hate to say it but it’s just not worth anything yet.

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      I understand the criticism to Jahshaka, and I agree with most of the things you have said. But I wouldn’t call it vaporware or something like that.
      I think Jahshaka has many interesting things and will be quite usable soon, and has a lot of potential.
      I was a little bit dissapointed at first too, but the last RC actually shows some improvements, and it’s becoming an interesting software.

      And my opinion isn’t biased because of some prize, as someone seggested. I really mean what I say, and I agree with Eugene: It doesn’t grow faster just because of its small userbase and the lack of developers.
      I could do a large list of things that I don’t like of Jahshaka, but instead of that I prefer to invite users and developers to join and make some contributions to it (or make a new program, if you can).

      This kind of comments are quite common in the world of open source applications: Everybody kills them when they aren’t ready yet. I think that contributing would be better. Sadly, some projects have this luck because they haven’t lots of developers or a good team management and users simply bash them instead of helping (i.e. The Gimp).

    • oto

      Yes, you’re right, it’s easy to bash
      It’s not polite, specially with free software under the beloved GNU license
      But the Jahshaka site/team? is quite pretentious
      And the Gimp it’s top quality software without the trendy side

    • Alabandit

      The challenge 4 me with jah was no that it was good or bad but it took me a while to figure out weather i ws coming or going. I think they need a bit more info on there site for first timers. If i knew what i new now i would have stuck to v1 instead of tring v2rc1. which left me with a programe that did work, unstable would have been fine, but not do much more than load then crash was fustrating… loking forward to more dev though :)

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      The problem with Jahshaka, IMO, was the excessive buzz that maybe didn’t match with the quality of the product. I agree with that.
      In that terms, Jahshaka site was a little bit pretentious, it’s true.
      But, despite of personal choices to draw attention to the project (I also think that the “empowering new hollywood” wasn’t the best chice) the project is still interesting and covers an empty space in the field of free software.
      But I agree: using “industry leading” arguments is pretentious and make users react as they do. The comparisions between the unstable betas and professional applications appear and we know who loses.

      Of course I’d like an open source After Effects or Fusion, but all we’ve got until now is Jahshaka. So let’s help to improve it.

      This kind of programs (graphics, video and fx related software) are quite complex and need a lot of work. Of course it’s easier to bash…
      Remember what happened with Positron, the Blender fork for video editing. Was a great idea, but it hasn’t enough developers to begin to grow. And peoplo of course say it sucks.
      Personally, I’d love to see a complete Blender fork for video editing and compositing, as a standalone.
      It’s ok to have a sequence editor an node compositing system inside blender, but going further in that direction could compromise Blender’s GUI integrity. So It would nice to have a standalone Blender only for video compositing and editing, with a better timeline integration and assets management. Improvements in this application could benefit Blender too.

    • epat

      well – I haven’t tryed jashaka but, I agree about the marketing, I mean, you can probably expect disappointments from a program that claims to be able to “Animate with *unlimited* features” for intance lol -epat

    • T-Ry

      If you think one developer with a dream who happens to have ties to Nvidia can’t lead a project to success you’ve never heard of Anim8or.

      To me this all seems hardly worth conversation. The majority of the folks who have tried Jahsh. have not been able to use it as a functional application at all. It’s more of a series of non-functioning GUI’s tied together. I’d be interested to find out what system configuration it does work in. I don’t mean this in the offensive tone it may appear but I give the criticism of a programmer of many years.

      Finally, if there were a standalone Blender for compositing and editing (and a few effects), all you’d find left of Jahshaka would be a small crater in the ground with a few (blender-made) splash screens.

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      I have Jahshaka installed in Linux (RC3) and Windows (RC4). And in a second computer, is installed in linux with an ATI card.
      It still has a lots of bugs, but if you compare it with the previous RC versions, you can notice its improvements.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Eugene

      @T-Ry
      About your last paragraph… best statement ever.

    • Joost Bouwer

      I’ve supported them for years. Until that stupid fight in the development team and again a serie of promises that they can’t make true. And I will support them again as soon they start being more serious about their development and not being the boys-with-toys anymore…
      And I know for sure that there are a lot of people who are willing to help out. Even guys who work at the big studios.
      Anyway enjoy the splash screen contest and for the winner: Enjoy your prices.

      Joost

    • http://www.konrad-haenel.de konrad8ha

      I’ve also been eagerly awaiting a usable version of Jahshaka, and I tried, god did I try! In fact a usable compositing/editing tool is really what’s missing the most in my pipeline.

      But currently Blender offers a whole lot more on the compositing side and, above all, works.

      I’m afraid not only is the Jashaka source broken, but also the project. They never even got around the oldest wisdom of open-source: release soon, release often.

      Nope, no kudos from here to the Jahshaka-project.

    • Omar

      @Gez: it’s not necessary to have 10 developers in a first time, look at the node based compositing soft from 3dsman (Sebastien Tricoire), soft called SNICE (under GNU GPL), he was almost alone on his dev, no sponsor, his version still 0.1 but it is totally functional, with great color correction tool, the GUI is sober with no disturbing stuff.
      Ok, it’s not a complete compositor but it does more than the “4,5 years of development sponsored” Jahshaka.
      Jahshaka team had during 3 years as main focus: GUI design, and recently, waste money on useless contest which would have been free of prize.

      The other side, you have tbc++ who released the over “buzzed” Positron 1.0 just after one month which is in fact a simple blender interface reorganized, damn it’s not serious

      Well stop about bashing.

      My last words:
      Opensource doesn’t work according to commercial marketing codes, make a clean roadmap/doc, a functional release, be modest and users will arrive from themselves no need of carrot.
      oh yeah, take your time too :)

      cheers

    • T-Ry

      I’m not about laying it on this thick and I really do hope that at some point Jahsh. will make a complete 180.

      I’ll even admit that sometimes we, as Blender users, blow some serious hot air ourselves about “dominating the industry” which is silly but I think taking the high-horse about something you’re proud of should be directly proportional to what your cause has accomplished. That said I think the Blender community is pretty close to proportion on all accounts.

      No more from me on this,

      Cheers.

    • alt

      Hum hum.. this is the software project that asked around cgtalk “what is cool” and is mostly concerned about looking hip?
      Serious users are not interested about what looks cool – they prefer something that works.
      It seems Jahshaka will never get it.

      I so wished that Jahshaka team would understand what is wrong with their approach and fix it, but their only worry is if they are cool enough.

      After Blender’s compositing code is a bit more mature and somebody releases short intro about adding new nodes to it, Blender will rid the world of half-baked open source compositing.

      And people who need something to redeem the empty promises of Jahshaka can always buy Nuke, Fusion or cheap Shake. Like I intend to do.

    • grafixsuz

      I too like everyone stated above has been watching and hoping, watching and hoping and…damn well giving up.
      Sorry to all the developers of Jahshaka, but until you get working software, not just an interface, you will by no means have the honest helpful support of your users. I mean, you talk about the things version 3 is supposed to accomplish, when you haven’t even proved that you can get out a workable V.2.

      I was really excited when I stumbled accross this project years ago, and kept waiting for that promised V.2 for years. Alot of wasted time!!!!! @Jahshaka, why didn’t you let those other developers take the project in the direction you originally intended it to go, if you can’t do the job, show some humility and accept it. It dosen’t mean you still couldn’t have been part of the project, just you could have left it too real developers. IMO Who knows maybe your talent is in developing cool interfaces.

      Sounds rude, but you should expect that with all the promises and false statements you have made and still make in behalf of your beloved GUI project.

      I agree with alt, if you need something to work the way the developers confess it does, you had better save up and buy shake or something that catches your fancy. because if you wait for Jahshaka, you will be waiting a LONG LONG LONG time before we see any really working version.

      I hope that you get your stuff together, and I hope you prove me wrong, because I would love to see this project really work. That’s the truth.

      Blender may have cousins, but this one??? I don’t know about that!

    • http://gustavthemushroom.deviantart.com Tim

      If Jahshaka has an animated startup screen….cant blender too? That would be cool….Well…I think so at least.

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      @Omar: Thanks for the info about SNICE. It’s very interesting, but I couldn’t make it work in my computer.

      Well. I guess most of people here is very dissapointed with Jahshaka. I hope they work harder and smarter and prove them they’re wrong.
      Anyway, I must agree with many comments. It’s true they’re giving more importance to cosmetics instead of taking care of some serious issues, and this is without a doubt a wrong approach.

    • Chico

      I did not find who is developing this tool from their home.

      Names? Locations? Or… is this guys aliens?

    • Peter Schlaile

      Could someone tell me:
      - Why everyone wants a standalone NLE? What I liked very much about Blenders sequencer (and therefore enhanced it), was the tight integration with the modeller. Generating titles / credits etc. is very easy and straight forward that way.
      - What do you miss within the current Blender sequencer? It should be right now good enough to get serious work done IMHO. Tell me about your showstoppers ;-)

      Greetings,
      Peter

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      @Peter: I think most of us want a standalone compositor, although a non linear editor would be nice too.
      Why do we want it as a standalone instead of integrated to blender? Just because we want to keep Blender as a good 3D software. It’s ok it has builtin compositing and editing tools, but just as supporting tools. If Blender becomes a all-in-one software it will fail as the majority do. Blender would loose specificity and would become more and more difficult to mantain and debug.
      Blender, IMO, is one of the best softwares I’ve seen, and that’s because it does well what it is supposed to do. If you pack it with features that not belong to it you’ll begin to have problems of usability and productivity (i.e.: even more cross referenced keyboard shorcuts, neverending menus, etc.)
      If a derivative branch of Blender develop a standalone compositor, for instance, maybe some work in this program could be used inside blender compositor, but maybe lots of things useful in a compositor would be unnecesary inside a 3D software, cluttering the interface and making it big and heavy).
      I thing a program must target its main application instead of trying to be multi-purpose. If you need to burn a CD, you need a CD burner program, not a 300 MB “media center”. :-D
      That’s frequently the difference between Linux and Windows applications, and that’s because the need of a pretext for making money with “new versions”, not to please their users.

      But don’t get me wrong: I’m not criticizing the builtin NLE and compositor, but they are intended to other use. We love Blender, but we can’t say it can replace a full featured NLE or compositor (at least not yet, but I’m still thinking that it’s not a good idea).

    • Omar

      You seems to avoid/forget Cinelerra, this is an excellent NLE (and production proof :)).

      btw, Cinelerra-CV would have deserved a place on the booth.

      cheers

      take a lookt @ http://cvs.cinelerra.org/about.php

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      I didn’t mention Cinelerra because I was talking about a compositor mostly. Cinelerra is a NLE program with some basic compositing features.
      I’ve got Cinelerra 2 installed in my Ubuntu working fine.

    • http://kamranusman.blogspot.com Kamran

      i wonder how jahshaka people even thought about displaying that junk at siggraph? i am one of those many ppl who have been trying jahshaka and waiting for its years old promise of the ultimate v 3.0 initially and now a decent usable 2.0 atleast.. BUT I have given up hope in this project. I would suggest the jahshaka developers to do something they can do decently becasue I don’t see if they can make decent software.

      and please, do NOT make excuses of less developer resources! you know its a lame excuse.. you’d find plenty of great one-man projects!

    • Peter Schlaile

      @Gez: Hmm. You haven’t really answered the second part of my question: what do you really _miss_? What I really liked about a tight integration: a NLE is a multitrack editor with effect functionality and some compositing functions. The effects are either basic (fades, add channels, etc) or are heavy loaded specialized 3D-transition effects. The first part is easy and can be integrated well and the second part is – oops – a lot better done with blender, because of it’s flexibility. The compositing functions are also better done with a generic compositor that has basic nodes that can be freely (and I mean _freely_) combined into larger really usefull things. I think, there are thousands of reasons to combine a 3D-editor with a compositor with a NLE. (Also, because other programs try to do the same, but don’t have a really good 3D-editor but rather do specialized by hand coding…)

      My point is: a NLE is a rather basic tool. The complexity comes most of the time from effect filters (can be done a lot better with blender, since it is a _general_ 3D-editor / compositing tool). If you want to seperate 3D-editor from compositing tool you will loose a lot functionality (think of the awesome vector-motion-blur). If you want to seperate the NLE, you will have to recode all the compositing / 3D-features, that are _also_ needed within a NLE, basically doubling the effort.

      What I miss myself in Blender (and therefor code it, when I have time):
      - IPO-driving of _all_ effect parameters in the sequence editor
      - A sound node editor (think of Reaktor) Is _really_ funny to combine with 3D-scenes if you want to do room simulations ;-)
      - Better integration of the sequence-effect tracks with the compositor / 3D-editor (think of custom transitions build in the 3D-editor driven by IPO-curves from the sequence editor and “baken” for speed reasons into a cache-track).
      - Better sound mixing code. (Sound effect tracks, pegel meters, better output control (5.1 e.g.)

      Nothing of these ideas will result in really bloated code. (The sound code needs a cleanup anyways, why not just do it this time in a generic way?)

      The cool thing about Blender is that it has a totally orthogonal view to the full production pipeline. Therefore, I don’t think, it’s approach will fail.

      Just my 2 cents.

      Greetings,
      Peter

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar Gez

      Peter: Maybe my poor english doesn’t let me explain myself clearly.
      I’m not saying “take the compositor and sequence editor off Blender”. What I’m trying to say is: if you are an editor, you want a program for EDITING, not a complete suite with things you don’t need.
      This is specificity, and this allows better productivity, because the interface design is focused in getting the most efficient workflow. That’s why you’d use Premiere instead of After Effects for editing, despite the editing possibilities of After Effects, for instance.
      The key is productivity.
      Blender has a great productivity, but is mainly a 3D program. As I said before, it’s ok to have some supporting tools for editing and compositing *the 3D strips*.
      Obviously, if they create a standalone compositor, it should have the proper interoperativity with Blender, because it’s an critic part of the workflow.
      But you must remember that compositing isn’t always integrating a CG character or object with a filmed background. Sometimes you need to move, rotate and scale hundreds of 2D layers and making a strip in blender with the motion of every single layer and assembling it in the sequence editor ins’t precisely the fastest way to do it.
      I love Blender, I love open source software, but I still open After Effects when I have to make 2D motion graphics and open Premiere (could be Cinelerra if I learn a little more how to use it) when I want to trim a video and edit it.
      Anyway, I don’t think you’re wrong. If that way works for your needs, of course it’s ok.

    • http://www.twra5t.co.uk demt

      anyone know how to render the animation?

      cheers demt

    • http://www.versilbert.de luminansky

      @Peter:
      I know my comment is a little late. But I did not read this thread earlier.

      In my opinion You are completely right!
      What You miss is what I miss too, and I am glad that You miss it.
      I worked for years as a 3D and compositing artist, so I know what I am talking about.
      Most of the compositing systems I know try to integrate 3D more and more.
      Blender is coming from the opposite direction and for me that is very very interesting.
      I also agree that to have all that in one single tool can be very effective, especially for Previsualization or if You have a client in Your neck.
      So please continue what You do ! You have the right attitude for that stuff.